
Evil triumphed twice on Monday in a pair of tragi-comedies.
First, the International Criminal Court's Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan announced that he is seeking arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, accusing them of “war crimes and crimes against humanity” in the war between Israel and the Hamas terrorist organization.
Then, the members of the United Nations Security Council held a moment of silence for Ebrahim Raisi, the late President of Iran who was killed in a helicopter crash on Sunday.
The juxtaposition of these two events perfectly encapsulates the moral failings of the international institutions that are supposed to represent peace and justice. These institutions that were created to represent humanity at its best instead represent humanity at its worst.
The decision to pursue arrest warrants against Israeli leaders is monstrous in how it creates a moral parity between Netanyahu and Gallant and genocidal madmen like Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar. It is obscene in how it ignores the extraordinary successes Israel has had in avoiding causing civilian casualties in in Gaza. It is comical in how it was made only after the UN was forced to revise its figures for women and children killed in Gaza down by nearly half, undermining the entire argument of supposed Israeli wrongdoing.
As John Spencer, chair of urban warfare studies at West Point, wrote, “Israel has implemented more precautions to prevent civilian harm than any military in history—above and beyond what international law requires and more than the U.S. did in its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
The very idea that there is any comparison between the horrors committed on October 7 and the response to ensure October 7 can never happen again is antisemitic. The civilian to combatant casualty ratio in Gaza is, based on the currently available data, between 1:1 and 1:1.5. This is in a world where in the average conflict, nine civilians are killed for every combatant fatality.
If the IDF is guilty of war crimes even with these achievements, then war itself is a crime, every nation that has ever engaged in military action for any reason is criminal, and self-defense has been outlawed.
On the same day the International Criminal Court sought to punish Israel for the crime of not rolling over and dying, the UN Security Council saw fit to honor one of the most evil men in the world.
In what universe does anyone think it is a good idea to stand and honor a man known as “the butcher of Tehran?” Raisi has the blood of thousands on his hands.
In 1988, Raisi sat on the so-called “Death Commissions” that ordered the executions of thousands of political prisoners in Iran. The US Institute of Peace estimates that about 5,000 people were summarily executed, while other estimates put the figure at as high as 30,000.
Under Raisi’s presidency, Iran brutally cracked down on the protests that erupted in the aftermath of the police’s murder of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman who was arrested in 2022 for the crime of not wearing her hijab correctly. About 22,000 protesters were arrested and 550 were killed in the crackdown. Iran remained just as oppressive to women after Amini’s death as before, and many female protesters were raped or sexually assaulted by their captors.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Raisi was involved in the planning of the Hamas massacre of October 7, when 1,200 people were mercilessly butchered in southern Israel and over 250 were taken hostage to Gaza. Raisi himself enthusiastically supported the massacre, praising the worst mass murder committed against the Jewish people since the Holocaust. Hamas is an Iranian proxy, which receives training, funding, arms, and orders from its Iranian masters.
This is the man the United Nations chose to honor. This is the man the Security Council, the body tasked with ensuring global security, chose to hold a minute of silence for.
Jews defending themselves are committing a crime worthy of arrest, while at the same time mass murderers who are also genocidal antisemites are honored. What a world.
In a sane world, it would be Ebrahim Raisi and his master, the Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who would face arrest for their endless crimes against humanity, not Netanyahu and Gallant.
A minute of silence would be held not for Raisi, but for his victims, and the only reason any decent human being should mourn his death is that he died without facing justice.
The former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan once stated that he could not fathom that the whole world could be wrong and Israel could be right. The farces played out at the UN and the ICC prove once and for all that yes, the whole world is wrong, very, very wrong. And Israel is right.
Gary Willig is a veteran member of the Arutz Sheva news staff.